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Sunday, 13 July 2014

I am a little sorry that Jan Stawasz doesn't seem to have given names to any of his lovely doilies and other works. Maybe it was because there were so many of them! In our tat-along thread in InTatters, I tried suggesting a few nicknames for it (Jupiter? Juno? Big Beauty?). However, none of them took. So this doily — the one published in Moje Robótki 8/2007 — is just going to be referred to as the Jan Stawasz Big Doily.

Anyway, I have been alternating between this doily and the Renulek Spring 2014 Napkin. This JS Big Doily is definitely harder for me than the Renulek doily. Renulek has tended to use one size of ring in any given round. But not Jan Stawasz! The rings are various sizes, with various intervals between the picots. The chains are various lengths, again with various intervals between picots.

And the picots are graduated — there are lots of bunches of three picots, with the centre one being bigger than the ones on either side. Also, since the decorative picots are important, I am trying to make them bigger than my joining picots — not with too much success so far; I tend to make small picots.

So, I have had to stay on my toes in tatting this doily, and I've been undoing mistakes a good deal.

Here's Round III done:

Jan Stawasz Moje Robótki 8/2007 doily, Round III complete

After that, I thought I might get bored on Round IV, or perhaps I would lose count of all the simple rings and chains — that is, I would have the opposite difficulty from Rounds II and III — all the rings and chains are the same, or nearly so! So then I thought I would do the Round V rosettes first, then join them in as I tat Round IV. But I discovered that keeping track of decorative vs. joining picots was much harder on an unconnected rosette than on the simple Round IV. So I abandoned my first Round V rosette halfway and went back to Round IV.

But then I was curious and I joined in my Round V rosette, to see how it would look. I also had some notion of tatting both Round IV and Round V together, but found it too awkward to have three shuttles and a ball hanging from the work.

Jan Stawasz Moje Robótki 8/2007 doily, Rounds IV & V begun

So then I proceeded with Round IV. Thanks to another member of InTatters, I knew I had to be careful to keep count of the joining and non-joining chains, and the joining vs. the decorating picots on the rings. That is, Round IV is not so very simple after all! So, I put strivers on the joining picots to keep track.

The strivers alerted me to a major mistake. I had joined to Round III too soon (at the ring marked by the orange slice), and the strivers were no longer straddling the valleys of Round III in a symmetrical fashion.

Jan Stawasz Moje Robótki 8/2007 doily, mistake in Round IV

I started undoing the nine rings after my mistake, but then the thread broke, so I just cut them off and rejoined and continued. I still had just enough thread on my shuttle to finish Round IV. Whew!

Jan Stawasz Moje Robótki 8/2007 doily, Round IV complete

You can now see all three colours of Coats Mercer Crochet that I'm using for this doily. The main colour is a pale golden-brown (Colour 627), and the highlight colour is ecru or cream (Colour 609). And, if you look closely, you can see that Round IV is pale brown (Colour 626) — just slightly less yellow than the golden-brown in Rounds I, II and V. My idea is that the pale brown recedes a bit, so I will use it on the rounds which are plain, more like "background".

Another first for me on this doily is that this Coats thread is somewhat older than threads I've tatted with until now. I am learning to be more gentle with it — not to pull too hard, lest it breaks. That said, it's a beautiful firm thread, and it doesn't stick or twist at all when closing rings. And its subtle colours are easy on the eye.

I don't have that pattern, and now that I see all that's involved, I think I may try to find a copy. That's quite a challenge, and it looks like you've got a good plan going! I love the thread colors you're using!

Watching you and Rachael progress is motivating me to keep up! I didn't have trouble with Round 4, but for some reason I keep messing up Round 5. Double checking stitch counts is difficult in size 100, and I find my eyes playing tricks on me. I will be checking up here and at InTatters to see how you are doing as the weeks move forward.

In case it's helpful, I discovered an error in the diagram for Round V! The rings joining to Round IV are missing two picots. You can tell by comparing the different rosettes. Hmm, maybe I should report this in InTatters... :-)

Can you tell me how you got your pattern. I have both of his books and that pattern is not in them. I would love to make it myself. It is time I did a monster doily like this one that was in Moji Robotki magazine.